tions, as well as to the capacities of those whom he instructs, and to inquire often into their progress and improvement.

And he should take particular care of his own temper and conduct that there be nothing in him, or about him, which may be of ill example; nothing that may savour of a haughty temper, a mean and sordid spirit; nothing that may expose him to the aversion or to the contempt of his scholars, or create a prejudice in their minds against him and his instructions: but, if possible, he should have so much of a natural candour and sweetness mixed with all the improvements of learning, as might convey knowledge into the minds of his disciples with a sort of genteel insinuation and sovereign delight, and may tempt them into the highest improvements of their reason by a resistless and insensible force. But I shall have occasion to say more on this subject, when I come to speak more directly of the methods of the communication of knowledge.

He

V. THE learner should attend with constancy and care on all the instructions of his tutor; and if he happens to be at any time unavoidably hindered, he must endeavour to retrieve the loss by double industry for time to come. should always recollect and review his lectures, read over some other author or authors upon the same subject, confer upon it with his instructor, or with his associates, and write down the clearest result of his present thoughts, reasonings, and inquiries, which he may have recourse to hereafter, either to re-examine them, and to apply them to proper use, or to improve them further to his own advantage.

VI. A STUDENT should never satisfy himself with bare attendance on the lectures of his tutor, unless he clearly takes up his sense and meaning, and understands the things which he teaches. A young disciple should behave himself so well as to gain the affection and the ear of his instructor, that, upon every occasion, he may with the utmost freedom ask questions, and talk over his own sentiments, his doubtsand difficulties with him, and, in a humble and modest manner, desire the solution of them.

VII. LET the learner endeavour to maintain an honourable opinion of his instructor, and heedfully listen to his instructions, as one willing to be led by a more experienced guide and though he is not bound to fall in with every sentiment of his tutor, yet he should so far comply with him as to resolve upon a just consideration of the matter, and try and examine it thoroughly with an honest heart, before he presume to determine against him. And then it should be done with great modesty, with a humble jealousy of himself, and apparent unwillingness to differ from his tutor, if the force of argument and truth did not constrain him.

VIII. It is a frequent and growing folly in our age, that pert young disciples soon fancy themselves wiser than those who teach them; at the first view, or upon a very little thought, they can discern the insignificancy, weakness, and mistake of what their teacher asserts. The youth of our day, by an early petulancy, and pretended liberty of think ing for themselves, dare reject at once, and that with a sort. of scorn, all those sentiments and doctrines which their teachers have determined, perhaps after long and repeated consideration, after years of mature study, careful observation, and much prudent experience.

IX. IT is true, teachers and masters are not infallible, nor are they always in the right; and it must be acknowledged it is a matter of some difficulty for younger minds to maintain a just and solemn veneration for the authority and advice of their parents, and the instructions of their tutors, and yet at the same time to secure to themselves a just freedom in their own thoughts. We are sometimes too ready to imbibe all their sentiments without examination, if we reverence and love them; or, on the other hand, if we take all freedom to contest their opinions, we are sometimes tempted to cast off that love and reverence to their persons which God and nature dictate. Youth is ever in danger of these two extremes.

X. But I think I may safely conclude thus: though the authority

E 4

authority of a teacher must not absolutely determine the judgement of his pupil, yet young and raw and unexperienced learners should pay all proper deference that can be to the instructions of their parents and teachers, short of absolute submission to their dictates. Yet still we must maintain this, that they should never receive any opinion into their assent, whether it be conformable or contrary to the tutor's mind, without sufficient evidence of it first given to their own reasoning powers.

THE

CHAP. VII.

Of learning a Language.

HE first thing required in reading an author, or in hearing lectures of a tutor, is, that you well understand the language in which they write or speak. Living languages, or such as are the native tongue of any nation in the present age, are more easily learnt and taught by a few rules, and much familiar converse, joined to the reading some proper authors. The dead languages are such as cease to be spoken in any nation; and even these are more easy to be taught (as far as may be) in that method wherein living languages are best learnt, i. e. partly by rule, and partly by rote or custom. And it may not be improper in this place to mention a very few directions for that purpose.

I. BEGIN with the most necessary and most general obsertions and rules which belong to that language, compiled in the form of a grammar; and these are but few in most languages. The regular declensions and variation of nouns and verbs should be early and thoroughly learnt by heart, together with twenty or thirty of the plainest and most ne- . cessary rules of syntax.

But let it be observed, that in almost all languages some of the very commonest nouns and verbs have many irregularities in them: such are the common auxiliary verbs, to be, and to have, to do, and to be done, &c. The comparatives

and

and superlatives of the words good, bad, great, much, small, little, &c. and these should be learnt among the first rules and variations, because they continually occur.

But as to other words which are less frequent, let but few of the anomalies or irregularities of the tongue be taught among the general rules to young beginners. These will better come in afterwards to be learned by advanced scholars, in a way of notes on the rules, as in the Latin grammar called the Oxford grammar, or in Ruddiman's notes on his Rudiments, &c. Or they may be learnt by examples alone, when they do occur; or by a larger and more complete system of grammar, which descends to the more particular forms of speech: so the heteroclite nouns of the Latin tongue, which are taught in the school-book called Que Genus, should not be touched in the first learning of the rudiments of that tongue.

II. As the grammar by which you learn any tongue should be very short at first, so it must be written in a tongue with which you are well acquainted, and which is very familiar to you. Therefore I much prefer even the common English Accidence (as it is called) to any grammar whatsoever written in Latin for this end. The English Accidence has doubtless many faults: but those editions of it which are printed since the year 1728, under the correction of a learned professor, are the best; or the English rudiments of the Latin tongue, by that learned North Briton Mr Ruddiman, which are perhaps the most useful books of this kind which I am acquainted with; especially because I would not depart too far from the ancient and common forms of teaching, which several good grammarians have done, to the great detriment of such lads as have been removed to other schools.

The tiresome and unreasonable method of learning the Latin tongue by a grammar with Latin rules would appear, even to those masters who teach it so, in its proper colours of absurdity and ridicule, if those very masters would attempt to learn the Chinese or Arabic tongue, by a grammar

written

written in the Arabic or Chinese language. Mr Clark of Hull has said enough in a few pages of the preface to his new grammar 1723, to make that practice appear very irrational and improper; though he has said it in so warm and angry a manner, that it has kindled Mr Ruddiman to write against him, and to say what can be said to vindicate a practice, which, I think, is utterly indefensible.

III. AT the same time when you begin the rules begin also the practice. As for instance, when you decline musa, muse, read and construe the same day some easy Latin author by the help of a tutor, or with some English translation: choose such a book whose style is simple, and the subject of discourse is very plain, obvious, and not hard to be understood; many little books have been composed with this view, as Corderius's Colloquies, some of Erasmus's little writings, the sayings of the wise men of Greece, Cato's moral distichs, and the rest which are collected at the end of Mr Ruddiman's English grammar, or the Latin Testament of Castellio's translation, which is accounted the purest Latin, &c. These are very proper upon this occasion, together with Æsop's and Phædrus's Fables, and little stories, and the common and daily affairs of domestic life, written in the Latin tongue. But let the higher poets, and orators, and historians, and other writers, whose language is more laboured, and whose sense is more remote from common life, be rather kept out of sight, till there be some proficiency made in the language.

It is strange that masters should teach children so early Tully's Epistles, or Orations, or the poems of Ovid or Virgil, whose sense is oftentimes difficult to find, because of the great transposition of the words; and when they have found the grammatical sense, they have very little use of it, because they have scarce any notion of the ideas and design of the writer, it being so remote from the knowledge of a child; whereas little common stories and colloquies, and the rules of a child's behaviour, and such obvious subjects, will much better